Rating or reviewing books by this author (pseudonym or not) always ends up being very painful to me.

She writes actually strong female main characters that are not just a thin veneer to satisfy some genre trend.

They are actually intelligent while still feeling like actual humans with facets with depth and flaws that keep them interesting and not become boring marry-sues.
She has a wicked sense of humor that is easily on par with male authors which is incredible and incredibly entertaining.

She tells stories that, instead of following the easy clichée by forcing her characters down some predefined path and ruining any and all of their believability in the process, actually feel new and surprising and interesting in a way I only notice after I read another book by her after some time.
In this one, the author explores an unexpected situation and its consequences without taking prisoners.
She just follows where the story goes from there which ends up being bittersweet in the best way.
That is not to say there is no planning or steering going on. But the way it is written it is not obvious to the reader which is the best kind of planning in a story.

So why is a critique of her books always so painful then?
Because she overdoes it all. The first half of this book was an easy 4-star if not bordering on 5 stars for me. But the longer it goes on the more she keeps stacking the silly jokes higher and higher to the point where I am having trouble taking anything serious anymore. It sometimes seems like for example the main character's parents could lie on the floor bleeding out and while they die they trade witty quips and ridiculous punchlines with their daughter instead of calling an ambulance. This is purely an exaggerated hypothetical of course but I think it brings across how the humor and the ridiculousness are stacked too high. The author also has a tendency to keep jokes around for too long even after they stopped being funny.

In the same vein of too much of a good thing, the way the story demonstrates the strength and willfulness of the main character goes over the top in the same way. It almost feels like the author is trying to compensate for all the spineless and shallow doormats in other modern urban fantasy at once.
But in the process, it swings too far the other way.

The cheesiness of the endings is also way too much. It's sweet like drinking syrup straight. And I am very tolerant of incredible cheesiness from all the run-of-the-mill paranormal romances I've read. But this is a bit too much even for me and at the same time, it stretches the believability and consistency of the characters I previously praised so highly to an intolerable degree as well.

From my experience, all her books suffer from basically exactly these same problems to varying degrees.

The author clearly has skills, creativity, and humor far beyond most urban fantasy authors and I want to acknowledge her competence but she blows it every time when closing out her stories.
So as much as it pains me this gets just 3 stars from me, like always. ( )

2.75 stars - Bought this book on a whim and because the summary sounded interesting. It's very rare for me to read straight up m/f anyway, but I thought, what the heck? So I gave it a shot.
Note: this story (is supposed to be) set in a post-apocolyptic world where magic upset the old balance and helped to create a new world ruled by 12 royal families and people capable of wielding magic.

This book is supposedly a PNR, but since we never get much of a demonstration of magic until the very end of the story, it's an iffy description at best. The one night stand who won his bid on her time at a charity auction* [fake prostitut(ion)] (who's face Mackenzie can't see - who wears a mask in public [disfigured protagonist/secret identity]) visits Mackenzie in her dreams, but since she doesn't take their discussions as anything else as longing for a boyfriend, Mackenzie just thinks she's having remarkably vivid dreams ...

Mackenzie's supposedly a "null", someone who never developed a magical ability, much to her frustration. This status makes her a second class citizen, easily pushed aside by the "elites" and kept to the lower echelon of society. When she's given the opportunity to fight for null rights in the Texas Congress, she jumps at the chance, in part to give her unexpected daughter (from the one night stand [secret baby]) a better life (nothing wrong with that).

Hits almost all the tropes too. Is there a checklist? A bingo card? hmmm.

By golly there is!

The free space can stand for either "default hetero" or "all is Caucasian" - because despite being mostly set in Texas, we never encounter a character who is overtly Hispanic, of Central/South American descent, or is of any other ethnic origin, nor do we encounter anyone who might be gay/Lesbian/asexual/etc. because? Who knows ...

While I did enjoy most of the humor in this book, it's just really a standard romance about an ordinary woman who finds herself at the center of politics, royal schemes, goes from [rags to riches] with a marriage to her high IQ ten year old daughter's father who just happens to be a king ...

What peril there is, from a thwarted rival of a decade past is poorly developed, as is the supposed danger of Mackenzie's parents trying to take her daughter away from her for being an unwed, and therefore, unqualified mother. We also get an arranged marriage between the heir of the Texas throne and the daughter because it turns out young Adam (15) is an "empathic leech" (could you use an even more negative term? Maybe, I don't know - psychic vampire?) who has fixated on a ten year old (shudders). (The author makes a note of child marriage her author's comment at the end of the book - an issue of which she wants to make people aware. Which, isn't a bad thing, just kind of an odd note to make for a book set in a fantasy world.)

_=_=_=_=_
*Perpetrated by another romantic trope: the interfering parent - in this case Mackenzie's mother who bought the ticket to the auction for Mackenzie then guilts her into going.
( )

Mackenzie is wonderful - one hell of a woman. Awful lot of Royals wandering around looking for partners, though… ( )

This book is the story of Mackenzie and Dylan and shows how the political system of the Royal states works. Or should I say, what doesn't work. I really love Mackenzie and Dylan's love for eachother and their daughter, the way they fight the system for a better live for all the people in the Royal States. ( )