Finished Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes, about a spaceship captain, and I'm currently reading the sequel. I liked both of them, the second (so far) a little more than the first. I might have to find the author's social media to see if she has any art of the captain's alien boyfriend though, I still have no idea what he looks like lol.
Also read Braking Day by Adam Oyebanji, which I really liked. It's space opera set on a generation ship; they're almost to their destination planet, and the MC is an engineer who's helping to prepare the ship to brake so they don't overshoot the planet. But then he sees a girl hovering outside of the airlock without a spacesuit on... Really liked the plot and the characters, there's a big twist where I was like "how does that make sense???", and I found the explanations to be really satisfying.
Also read The Labyrinth's Archivist by Day Al-Mohamed, a fantasy novella about a blind archivist who solves a murder mystery. This one frustrated me not because it was bad, but because it was a novella and I wanted it to be longer :( The pacing was mostly okay, but the romantic subplot felt rushed and I think there just wasn't enough space for it to breathe.
Next: Temple of the Inner Flame by Amber Fisher. It's been a while since I've read any urban fantasy!
Finished my re-read of Black Leopard, Red Wolf. I wasn't really able to do what I wanted to do originally (compare it to its sequel), since I read both books on Kindle, but I still enjoyed the re-read; I had some different impressions the second time around. (In particular, for some reason I thought this book was very non-linear the first time I read it, but now I'm not really sure why I thought this? It's a pretty linear narrative.) It was also interesting to read knowing more about the overall political context from the sequel--there was a lot of stuff happening that Sogolon knew about, but Tracker didn't.
Currently reading: Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdez, about a spaceship captain who gets blackmailed into running missions for a criminal organization. I'm most of the way through it and I like it pretty well; would recommend if you like space opera ~~and alien romance written by someone who isn't a coward~~.
Next: Maybe Braking Day by Adam Oyebanji, to stay on the space opera thing. I should also see if Valdez has published anything else...