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Book 930: The Fake Boyfriends Debacle (Frat Brats of Santa Barbara #1) – Hayden Hall

When this popped up on the Gay Romance Reviews site I requested a copy since I’d been watching Hall’s social media and book releases for some time.* I figured why not give him a go and see what I thought.

Unfortunately, for me, this was a miss. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t poorly written or anything and honestly, it probably had better copy-editing than most of the self-published books I’ve read or received via GRR. It just didn’t work, but more on that later.

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Book 929: Portrait of a Thief – Grace D. Li

I’m punching myself for not reading this book earlier AND for goofing off (aka knitting and Minecrafting) while reading it instead of blazing through it as it deserved. I’ve been sitting on this since November of LAST YEAR when someone in marketing at the publisher reached out with it.* I forced myself to wait until late March/early April to read it because I had a feeling I would really enjoy it and that barely covers my enthusiasm for it.

The premise was fascinating to me even if I was a bit wary of the Boston setting (I have bad experience with books being set where I live/have lived), but international art theft by college students, critiques on colonialism, BIPOC author, and characters, discussion of diaspora, ummm obviously I was going to say yes to it. I found out while reading the acknowledgments, that this has already been optioned by Netflix and I cannot tell you how much I’m ready for that!

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Book 928: Going Public (Jade Capital #2) – Hudson Lin

I requested an ARC of this one from the publisher after I saw it in their upcoming titles email that I get monthly.* The fact that there was not just one non-white man on the cover of this MM Romance novel, but TWO of them was a definite ‘okay let’s give this Hudson Lin person a try.’

Totally on me, but I also thought it was written by a man (damn you pseudonyms!), but that didn’t change my opinion or reading of the novel, I was just excited that there were BIPOC protagonists AND they were on the cover. Add in that I don’t think I’ve read many with Asian protagonists and it caught my attention.

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Book 927: Rearranged (Do-Over #1) – E.M. Denning

Having seen the mess that some people make of themselves when they go to Las Vegas when this book popped up on my radar I jumped at the chance to grab a copy of it.*

And for the most part, I wasn’t disappointed. You have Rowan, the perfect son who has done everything his parents have ever asked him to do including marrying his friend who he has no attraction to, and Sid, the literal red-headed-step child (of his dad’s political rival), who is a contrarian when it comes to doing ANYTHING his parents want him to do.

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Updates

March Recap 2022

March is gone and April is moving even faster. I’m not sure how it’s already the sixth but here we are. I’m sitting in an airport to fly to Texas for a wedding and just now catching my breath to be able to blog my recap.

March was really jam-packed from my celebrating my getting into the Harvard Graduate School of Education (see fun photo at the end) and a friend’s new job to hiking part of the Blue Hills. I also taught myself how to do color work knitting and we brought back date night. And this doesn’t even start to cover how busy I’ve been at work recently.

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